Our neighbour comically replied, “Madam, if what you say be true, a name is of more importance than I thought, and I feel less inclined than ever to part with that which has the power of conjuring up to your view my grandfather, honest Roger Bentley, who named the farm which I inhabit Mount Prospect. No, Madam, fond as I am of my ancestors, though they were neither possessed of rank or fortune, I should be ashamed, if, instead of being sheltered by a solid _lump_ of a house fit for our climate, I was perched upon the top of a hill in some fine Italian edifice, spread out with corridors, supported on piazzas, and looking as if it had been blown, by contrary winds, like a tropical bird, into our bogs by accident. Your Tivolis, Valambrosas, and Rialtas are capital absurdities, Madam; and I should blush were I obliged by filial respect to defend them; but, thank God, _my_ parents were plain worthy people, who built a snug square house, and called it Mount Prospect.” Mrs. Fitzroy told him that the wings, colonnades, and transalpine nomenclature, were as ridiculous in her eyes as in his, “but,” added she, “I find you very ready to inveigh against one class of follies, while you are all clemency towards others; and as to the names of your country seats in Ireland, they are quite a reproach to you as a nation. If I hear that I am going to visit at _Oakpark_, I am certain that I shall see a desert moor, with a few ten-year old elms, thinly scattered, and paled in with hurdles, to prevent the sheep from barking them. If I am to call at _Hazlewood_, I am equally sure to find no wood at all, or at most an old hawthorn bush in solitary abstraction. _Hollybrook_ has, I am convinced, neither brook nor holly near it. _Rockview_ has, probably, not a stone larger than an orange to be seen within its precincts; and so on of a thousand other misnomers that I could enumerate.” I remember that Mr. Bentley was _rising_ in choler, as he felt _lowered_ from not being ready at reply; but dear Domine flew to the rescue, and seeing the commotion of our worthy friend, he brought him off with a sort of triumph, by assuring Mrs. Fitzroy that oaks _had_ stood where now there are only the ghosts of these forest kings; that rocks _had_ been where now the quarryman’s pick-axe has left a level plain; that brooks, which meandered once, are now dry; and that our names are often remnants of our former, not indications of our present pride. I forget how the conversation ended, but it amused me at the time that it happened, and slipped out of my recollection, till having written Mount Prospect, that name revived the remembrance of a combat which diverted us.